“What wild nonsense you talk!  Keen & Co. might, perhaps, be able to trace the concrete, but how are they going to trace and find the abstract?”

“She isn’t abstract; she is a lovely, healthy, and youthful concrete object—­if, as you say, she does exist.”

“How can I prove she exists?”

“You don’t have to; they do that.”

“Look here,” said Gatewood almost angrily, “do you suppose that if I were ass enough to go to these people and tell them that I wanted to find my ideal—­”

“Don’t tell them that!”

“But how—­”

“There is no necessity for going into such trivial details.  All you need say is:  ’I am very anxious to find a young lady’—­and then describe her as minutely as you please.  Then, when they locate a girl of that description they’ll notify you; you will go, judge for yourself whether she is the one woman on earth—­and, if disappointed, you need only shake your head and murmur:  ‘Not the same!’ And it’s for them to find another.”

“I won’t do it!” said Gatewood hotly.

“Why not?  At least, it would be amusing.  You haven’t many mental resources, and it might occupy you for a week or two.”

Gatewood glared.

“You have a pleasant way of putting things this morning, haven’t you?”

“I don’t want to be pleasant:  I want to jar you.  Don’t I care enough about you to breakfast with you?  Then I’ve a right to be pleasantly unpleasant.  I can’t bear to watch your mental and spiritual dissolution—­a man like you, with all your latent ability and capacity for being nobody in particular—­which is the sort of man this nation needs.  Do you want to turn into a club-window gazer like Van Bronk?  Do you want to become another Courtlandt Allerton and go rocking down the avenue—­a grimacing, tailor-made sepulcher?—­the pompous obsequies of a dead intellect?—­a funeral on two wavering legs, carrying the corpse of all that should be deathless in a man?  Why, Jack, I’d rather see you in bankruptcy—­I’d rather see you trying to lead a double life in a single flat on seven dollars and a half a week—­I’d almost rather see you every day at breakfast than have it come to that!

“Wake up and get jocund with life!  Why, you could have all good citizens stung to death if you chose.  It isn’t that I want you to make money; but I want you to worry over somebody besides yourself—­not in Wall Street—­a pool and its money are soon parted.  But in your own home, where a beautiful wife and seven angel children have you dippy and close to the ropes; where the housekeeper gets a rake off, and the cook is red-headed and comes from Sligo, and the butler’s cousin will bear watching, and the chauffeur is a Frenchman, and the coachman’s uncle is a Harlem vet, and every scullion in the establishment lies, drinks, steals, and supports twenty satiated relatives at your expense.  That would mean the making of you; for, after all,